Amarco Half-Marathon

This was the race I had been preparing for since this past June when I decided to move up and tackle a Half-Marathon. At the time, I felt like 1:32 was a very ambitious goal, given that I was barely able to handle a 4.5 mile run on the track at 7:00/mile. But I'm still in my first year of real running so I wasn't exactly sure what to expect. However, my training has been going amazingly well the past 3 months and I felt like, with good weather, I could challenge the 90-minute barrier.

I've spent the past two days driving on the road and at track meets. I was slightly worried that this could wear me out, but there was nothing I could do about it, so I decided to not worry about it much.

I made all my necessary plans and packing last night and I was able to get to bed around 11pm. I got a solid 5 hours of sleep (not ideal the night before a long race) before my alarm went off. Once I got to the Brown Convention Center I oriented myself and began my warm up about an hour before the race. I warm up a little longer than normal, and then quickly found myself rushed to get to the start line. Thanks to some nice pushing and shoving on my part I was able to work my way up near the front of my wave (correcting a mistake I made in October).

My goal was the run 7:00 to 7:05 for each of the first three miles before trying to pick the pace up. I was worried that I might crash and burn again like my last Half, so I tried to relax as much as possible and just let the race come to me.

As I passed the first mile mark I clicked my watch and saw 6:57. I felt pretty comfortable and just kept it going. At the second mile I saw 6:50. I was still felt good, but I knew I had to make a decision at this point to keep it going, or back off and play it safe. I decided to take a chance and kept the pace up. I ended up running the next three miles with a guy who was targeting a 3-hour marathon. I was nice running with him and it was the first time I ran with someone and didn't feel like I had to slow down so they could keep up or speed up just to keep it. We ran 6:48 for each of my next three miles to hit the 5 mile mark at 34:15. Somewhere around this point I found myself running with the 3-hour marathon pace group that had caught up with us. I used these guys until the Half-Marathon turn around point (mile 9). I took my first Gu pack around 7.5-miles and my second one around 10.5-miles.

I hit the 11-mile mark in 1:14:43 (6:47.5/mile) and began to get nervous. This was around the point in October when I slowed from averaging 7:09/mile to running my last three miles in a 7:25/mile average. I ended up backing off slightly and ran mile 12 in 6:57. This was a bit of a subconscious slow down (plus running into some wind) and I was disappointed that I backed off that much, but I was still feeling pretty good. I ended up running my last mile in 6:34 (last .1 mile in 40-seconds to finish in 1:28:52!!!! I couldn't believe it. I thought I could challenge 90-minutes with a good day. It didn't cross my mind that I could possibly break 89-minutes until I passed mile 8, still feeling good.

To put this in a bit of a perspective.... one year ago I ran a 4 mile tempo run, as hard as I could run, in 30:36 (7:39/mile).... 3 months ago I ran a Half-Marathon in 1:35:00 (7:15/mile).... and today I ran 1:28:52 (6:47/mile). I used to think that I would probably never run 21-minutes for three miles. I feel very humbled at the moment.

I'm in great shape right now and I plan on running a 3200m time trial, a 5k road race, and 10k road race during the next 2 months to set some new PRs. But I'm just going to take the next few days easy and I'll get back to the hard workouts at the end of the this week. That's all for now.